The Undefeated

by Una McCormack

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

This is going to be a short review, since it is a short book. I mean goodness, I don't want to tell you everything, right? Right. So I am basically going to break it into two parts: The World, and The Characters. Because one was mostly a hit and one was rather a miss, and that sums up my feelings on this one. Let's do it! 

The World:

The world was really interesting, and I was eager to learn more about it. Our main character, Monica, is trying to get back to her childhood home at basically the end of humanity. An enemy is coming, threatening to wipe out whatever is left of humans. And apparently, they have the chops to do it. The concept of the jenjer, the modified humans who are enslaved and treated as "less than" is intriguing and I do wish we got more of their story. If I have one complaint about the world, it's that I'd want a bit more of it, but perhaps that's an unfair complaint for a novella, though it's more to say, I enjoyed this aspect.

The Characters:

I just felt nothing for Monica, and that basically is my biggest issue with this story. I wanted to understand where she's coming from, but to me she read rather unlikable. And that is okay I suppose, except when she is one of the only characters we encounter, it makes it hard to actually care if she survives the end of the human race. She doesn't seem to have a lot of sympathy for the jenjer, even though one is currently her companion. To be fair though, she doesn't seem to have much sympathy for anything, and seems quite apathetic about the end of humanity, too. 

Bottom Line: Certainly a cool world and concept, perhaps needing a bit more emotional pull to feel fully immersive.